


a violence like sunlight

by actualflower



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Family Secrets, Gen, Mild Angst, also faren, bc ive developed a soft spot for this idiot and so has marjie, beau is a very important baby, character backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 03:50:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8733709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualflower/pseuds/actualflower
Summary: marjolaine giroux, tamer of beasts: a backstory told in snapshots.





	

i.

marjolaine is seven when they first hand her a bow and tell her, “shoot.” her first attempts at archery are fumbling and childlike, and she is frustrated - she is only seven, but she knows poise and grace, and this is nothing like what she has been taught thus far - the movement of her arms are ungainly, her posture is tight and stiff, the bow’s string itself resists her at every turn. still, she persists.

* * *

ii.

marjolaine is a private, careful child, quiet and somber. faren is not. he is loud, and brash, and hangs out with the boys that like to make the other children cry when their lord and lady parents drag them to social functions.

it is one such function where they meet.

marjolaine sits, legs crossed in front of her and a book titled krytan flora and fauna by ser b.m. wexner on her lap, small hands cradling the edges. she places herself at the edge of the room, where the shadows of the candlelight lay thickest, and even though it makes it a touch harder to read, she is more content here. she is nine, and young, and though she has been taking ettiquette lessons, her mother is not here to scold her for not interacting with the other young lords-and-ladies-to-be in the room. (her mother wouldn’t scold her too much, though; she’s always known marjolaine is a private, careful child-)

the appearance of a richly-blue pair of tailored breeches in her periphery distracts her from her reading, and she looks up to stare into the eyes of one of the minister’s children; her mind wracks itself for a name, but none is forthcoming.

“hey, weirdo.” the boy’s tone is meant to be scathing, and the other boys behind him smirk and giggle as if on cue. marjolaine is struck by the thought of a stage play, a spotlight on both him and her, and the other boys like jackals tittering from just outside reach of the light.

“good evening, sir,” she says, because if her mother has taught her anything, it has been manners in the face of meanness. her attention drifts lazily back to the book in her lap, but is demanded once more by the boy in front of her with an angry huff.

“don’t you know it’s rude to read while someone’s talking to you?” his voice is whiny and plaintive, and marjolaine wishes he would just go away. when she doesn’t respond to the taunt, he pouts, and then smirks. marjolaine doesn’t notice it, not until he speaks again.

“of course, you can expect the daughter of a whore to behave proper, especially if she’s not even the whore’s daughter at all, just some street beggar’s kid left on a doorstep-”

the sound of his voice is cut of by a resounding thud - the book hits the floor neatly, and the boy’s face is shocked, even as the beginning of a nicely purpling bruise starts on his cheek. marjolaine retrieves the book from where it lay not a scant few inches from her crossed legs, while one of the boy’s hands reaches up to his face, incredulous. the room is silent - marjolaine takes it to understand that no one in particular had stood up to this particular bully before.

well, she thinks, i guess i’ll do it, then, and the dark thrill that runs in her palms and makes her wish for a bow is quashed and bottled before it can run amok in her thoughts. even a nine-year-old knows that kind of desire isn’t something you let other people see so easily. she opens the book, flips to the page she was reading, and continues, silent and unperturbed.

“why you little-” his sentence is lost after he reaches for her hair, her arm, small fists beating patterns of childish hate on her skin that she fights to block. a thrill of excitement runs through her - her shoes are sensible enough for fighting, and she’s wearing stockings, so there’s no worry of her dress riding up too far -

she gets in a few good hits of her own, but there are three boys and only one of her, and it’s enough for her to try and remember what her mother has taught her about defending herself, much less try and take down the boys. the ruckus they create must be loud, because it isn’t but a minute later that there are adults shouting and pulling them apart - marjolaine has a split lip, and she licks the blood away from her lip before her mother can see it.

“adelaide! what has gotten into your daughter?” one of the ministers says, even as she kneels to look at the boy’s bruised and wimpering face.

her mother gives her a sharp, reproachful look, but does not instantly chastise her. instead, she asks, “yes. what has gotten into you, little marjolaine?”

marjolaine smoothes her dress, does not wince when she extends her elbow too far and the forming bruise there pulls under her skin. before she can speak, the boy is simpering and stumbling out a story.

“we jus’ - just wanted to know what she was readin’ an’ - an’ she started yellin’, sayin’ we was illegitimate and all these rude things-”

he makes a convincing enough portrait of the victim. marjolaine doesn’t try to correct him. she knows her mother’s standing in court, anyway - she is respected enough, well-enough-known, but it is that she is feared that keeps her in the court’s good graces. marjolaine had foolishly thought herself immune to the petty squables of the other children until this point. she will not make that mistake again.

her mother gives her another look, eyes narrowed. “really now?”

marjolaine doesn’t respond, only looks at the boy with unmitigated hate in her heart and a deadpan face.

her mother turns to the ministers offended, all of them huddling around their offending children, and offers a placating smile. “i’m sure my daughter knows what she did was wrong, hm? an apology would not be remiss, marjolaine.” she directs this last statement at her, and marjolaine curtsies obediently.

“i apologize for any ill intent i may have wished upon your persons,” she says, far too eloquent and mildly unsettling. her voice is blank and uncolored with emotion, and all of the ministers scowl, as if on cue. once again, a stage comes to marjolaine’s mind.

“there we go,” her mother says, and the smile in her voice is bright, if a little too so.

the ministers grumble among themselves, apparently coming to the conclusion that her apology is satisfactory, and she hears one minister encourage his boy to accept the apology. he remains tight-lipped., as does the ringleader.

however, one voice does surprise her. “sorry for beatin’ on you, marjie.” the boy that stands farthest back speaks, genuine discontent and guilt in his voice. the other two boys turn a shockingly-fast about face, ready to turn on the turncoat, but he continues to speak. “we shouldn’t have bothered you in the first place. it won’t your fault.”

“the plot thickens,” she hears her mother whisper where she crouches next to marjolaine, a hand on her shoulder, and finally, marjolaine smiles. “his name is lord faren. accept his apology, marjolaine.”

“apology duly accepted, lord faren.” she gives another curtsey, and straightens to her full nine-year-old height. she brushes past the ringleader and his second and extends a hand to faren. an olive branch.

he brushes a hand across his face, wiping a lingering tear away, and takes it.

* * *

iii.

when she is eleven, she is hunting - for the first time, she sees the walls outside of divinity’s reach. the world is wider beyond those walls than she ever imagined. marjolaine has read the theory of hunting a hundred times over, knows what each etching of hundreds of different creatures look like by heart, but this - this wind. the plains, the trees, the forest, the river, the sun, even the air itself seems so much more than inside the city.

her mother lets her fumble her way through the first clumsy steps of a hunter-in-training, tracking the muddy prints of a full-grown river drake through the slosh of the shallow river winding through the hills. she is careful, silent, poised - her etiquette lessons have taught her much, but what she finds most useful now is the way they taught her to stand, to walk - the balance afforded her now is priceless.

marjolaine listens to the wind, feels the bowstring beneath her fingers. breathes, once, twice. the river drake looks at her from its place a score of yards away, only just now noticing her presence - now, when it is too late.

the arrow sings through the air, and marjolaine has her first kill.

“a clean shot,” her mother tells her, pride in her voice as she speaks in their mother tongue. “she did not suffer.”

marjolaine lets her mother guide her hand and her knife across the drake’s belly, lets the innards spill onto the earth, hot blood on her hands. when she goes to wash them in the river nearby, she spies a single egg nestled amongst the muddy silt.

it is large, and heavy, and unwieldy, but she cannot let it rest there alone. something about it feels wrong, somehow. even with her aching shoulders and dirty hands, she drags the egg that is half the size of her body and twice as heavy to the camp that her mother made.

her mother smiles like she is proud, like marjolaine has found a secret she did not want to keep and is glad to be rid of it. “ _ma chérie_ , bring it closer - it is close to hatching, and must be kept warm.” marjolaine nods, and presses a wondering hand to the blue-grey-green surface of the shell - she imagines that it leans toward the fire as she does, yearning to be near the warmth it provides.

her mother tells her of beast taming, an art in her bloodline that lets her bond with beasts and fight alongside them. “ _le lien de la bête,_ ” she murmurs, just barely audible above the crackle of the fire. the smell of roasting drake meat fills her with thoughts of food.

it does not occur to her that she killed the egg’s mother until she sinks her teeth into the roasted flesh of the mother drake.

* * *

iv.

the drake hatches a week after marjolaine returns to the city - her lessons have not stopped, as much as she might want them to. she spends every spare moment in company with the egg - reading to it, watching it, feeling the hard shell and all its bumps and ridges underneath her long, tapered, calloused fingers. it is a warm tuesday when it does, the sun pouring in steadily through the window and onto the swampy-colored shell. it starts with a thud, and a crack, and marjolaine puts down the book she is reading in favor of watching the new little beast emerge.

it takes a few moments of hearty struggle - first, a claw, and then the top half of a maw, a full-taloned foot after - marjolaine is suddenly stricken with fear: what if it hates me? what if i cannot tame it? what if, what if -

a full head and thick neck crane out of the shell, and with a shatter, the egg cracks underneath the weight of the newborn drake. all of marjolaine’s thoughts dissipate. she moves to catch the beast before it falls from the sill, clearing egg shell bits away - one she does not move fast enough, and the drake snaps it up in its jaws. curious, she slides another small piece of shell towards the drake. snap. it disappears inside the drake’s toothy maw. she’d read, somewhere, that certain reptile species consume their eggs after hatching, making a first meal of the calcium-rich prison that held them captive for so long. marjolaine had not thought river drakes were among them, but. she is only eleven. there is much to learn.

her mother appears at the doorway a short time later. marjolaine sits cross-legged on the floor with the beast half-in and half-out of her lap - it is larger that she expected, even with the size of the egg. marjolaine watches her smile out of the corner of her eye as she feeds another section of eggshell to her drake.

“good job, _chérie_ ,” her mother says as marjolaine pets down the spine of her drake, feeling soft flesh underneath birth-soft scales. “a healthy baby boy.”

beau, she thinks, and knows it is right. she does not know how her mother can sex the drake from the doorway - she supposes she will learn, in time. her mother told her much on that hunting trip, and there will be more hunting trips where she will learn much, much more.

for now, she feeds another bit of shell to the drake in her lap, and feels something bloom warm and right in her chest.

* * *

v.

when she first appears at societal functions with her _beau_ by her side, the other children give her a much wider berth than they ever did before - all except faren, who seems insatiable in his thirst for knowledge about the beast. she humors him easily, and together, they bond. in teaching faren about her beast, she learns more about herself and the drake than she thought she knew. it is mutually beneficial, and the three of them are rarely seen apart, after that.

* * *

vi.

she is twelve when her mother tells her that she was not born a noble. this much has tugged at her subconscious since she was much, much younger - a woman, not the beautiful brown-haired and soft-eyed woman before her, but a different one, one that she cannot place in her memory with any certainty but knows is not the woman in front of her.

“i may have fibbed a touch when i told you about the gift in our blood - i do not have it, _ma_   _fille,_ but you do. you have it in spades,” she says, eyes casting towards the still-growing drake that sits, as primly poised as his owner, at marjolaine’s side at the table. “your birth mother would be proud of you for harnessing it so - i know that i am, my dear child.”

marjolaine’s demeanor stays silent, thoughtful. inside, though, she is raving - who is she, if she is not of her mother’s blood? what is she? why does she have this touch? who are her parents? why did they leave her? are they dead? are they gone? was she not good enough, even as an infant? did they see something in her that marked her defective, marked her wrong, made them want to toss her to the next person that would take her? these questions boil in her mind.

“i understand if you have questions, _chérie_. i will try to answer them as best i can for you.”

she betrays nothing. instead, she nods, and says “ _maman_ , what are we having for dinner?”

her mother smiles, and marjolaine accepts the hug she gives with grace and love, along with the kiss to her forehead. _“je t’adore, ma petite coeur._ always remember that.”

marjolaine nods, and files the fierce want to know in her chest for another day. her mother loves her. she is well-taught, if not well-bred, and is spades ahead in her studies compared to other children. she possesses _le lien de la bête,_ and she has her _beau_ , and she is still young. she carefully tucks away the want to scream. it would do nothing. even a twelve-year-old would know that.

she pulls beau closer that night, and sleeps with the river drake curled against her back instead of at the foot of the bed. he is still small enough to fit there, but just barely - soon he will need a place of his own to sleep. she snuggles deep into her downy comforters, surrounded by the trappings of nobility that she was raised in, and dreams of a voice like sunlight lulling her to sleep.

* * *

vii.

she grows, and she learns. she is a quick study to everything she picks up, becomes passable in a handful of attempts, but only ever masters two things: one, her bow. two, her beast.

“jack of all trades, master of none, huh?” says faren, voice light and teasing when she makes him breakfast one morning, both of them at the giroux manor after marjolaine had pulled him from a pub crawl late last night. her breakfast is delicious, if simple, and perhaps it is made more delicious for its simplicity.

“better than a master of one, faren,” she smirks, glib and gleeful, and sets an omelette replete with peppers and onions and cheese in front of him.

“gods bless your soul, marjie, you’re a saint,” he mutters between bites, a bit of egg hanging from his lip. she laughs, and pats beau on the head where he sits next to her, patiently waiting for bits of food to be passed to him. she gives in after a moment, and secrets away pieces of pepper and onion to him when she thinks faren isn’t looking; it wouldn’t do to have everyone sneaking him food. he’d just become lazy and fat, the greedy lizard. he already enjoys his lazy days far too much, anyway.

marjolaine is nineteen, and she smiles while her two best friends in the world eat away at a meal of her own making. she tucks into her own omelette neatly, sips of apple juice washing it down with ease.

“i’ve been thinking about the ministry again,” faren says, after a long moment. his plate is half-cleared, and marjolaine sighs. it is an oft-discussed topic between them, nowadays.

“faren, you know how i feel about-”

“marjolaine, you have to know that you’d be good at it!” he exclaims, fork waving about dramatically. “you have this - thing about you, something that makes people stop and listen to what you’re saying. you’re not involved in all the petty shit that all the other nobles seem to live off of, you’re smarter than the whole lot of them, you’d be the legate minister within a year!”

marjolaine pinches the bridge of her nose. “no, faren. i wouldn’t. besides, my mother isn’t even a minister, she’s an adviser to the queen. ministry is hereditary. what my mother does is not. there’s no guarantee-”

“bullshit. you know that you’d have her job in a heartbeat if she thought you’d benefit from having it.”

“and she doesn’t think i would, so i don’t have her appointment, because she knows i don’t want it - i don’t want any of it! she knows that i’ve never been cut out for this sort of thing, not like you, faren.” marjolaine leans back in her chair, staring out the kitchen window to the street beyond. “you’re so much better at all of this, faren. all the squabbles and rivalries - they’re all so clear and easy to navigate to you, but to me? it’s just a wasp’s nest.” she blows a puff of air at a strand of hair that’s fallen across her face, and turns back to him. “you always seem so at ease. i envy you, faren.”

faren grimaces. “i wish i could be like you, then; so far removed from all the bullshit that clogs the system so that i don’t have to stare it in the face all damned day long! be glad you can stay ignorant, marjie-”

“i’m ignorant?” she sputters, incredulant. “i’m not the one who’s being shouted down for my mother being a supposed witch and whore - oh wait, i am! i know what kind of cancerous shit has taken root in our nobility, and i want no part of it!”

“then keep running, marjie! maybe then you’ll find what you’re looking for! maybe you’ll even find your real parents-!” the words slip out before he can stop them, and the look of shock on both of their faces is mirrored. regret claims faren’s expression, and he stands and reaches out towards marjolaine. “marjie, sweet divines, i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean-”

beau snaps at his fingers before he can touch her, and marjolaine stands, face smoothed into careful blankness. “i think you need to leave, lord faren.”

“marjie, damnit, don’t do that, i’m sorry, please, gods - fuck! beau, watch it!”

beau doesn’t move from where he sits, quietly grumbling a warning note. faren inspects the angry red slashes on the back of his hand from beau’s claws, and reaches out to marjolaine once more. “marjie, i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to-”

“you didn’t mean to what, faren?” she snaps, composure shot through with anger.

faren pauses a moment, and regret and guilt colors his face even deeper than before. “you’re right. you’re always right about this kind of stuff, marjolaine. i did mean it, because i knew it would hurt you, and i’m sorry it did.” he breathes in deep. marjolaine can almost hear how his heart swells with it, beats a touch faster on the exhaled sigh. “i’m sorry, marjolaine. i am.”

marjolaine deflates, and extends a hand to take faren’s in her own. beau growls, but she shushes him with a pat on the head. “i’m sorry, too. i know it’s not easy, seeing this poison and not being able to root it out yourself. i’m sorry i said it is.”

“apology duly accepted, lady marjolaine,” he says, a slight grin on his face, and marjolaine smiles. he presses a kiss to the back of her knuckles, and her heart swells with sisterly affection.

“your food’ll get cold, faren.”

“oh shit-” he scrambles to scarf down the rest of the omelette on his plate, almost choking on it, and she laughs. beau looks between them, and seemingly decides that faren is, once again, a friend, because he trundles over to sit at faren’s feet and demand scraps. faren looks between marjolaine and the drake at his feet before trying to sneak food onto the floor for beau to snap up. marjolaine pretends not to see it. she’ll let it slide for now.

she sips at her apple juice. once more, all is right with the world, at least for now.

**Author's Note:**

> finally got this to a point where i'd be comfortable posting it. hope you enjoyed reading about my ranger! marjolaine giroux, the tamer of beasts and one of my favorite children. here's a picture, for those so inclined, both with and without mask:
> 
> and here's a picture of her being exasperated at beau bc he's a little shit, which i didnt really explore in this but absolutely will in the future:
> 
>   
>    
> leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed! 
> 
> talk 2 me abt your PCs at [banshee-44, my main/fandom blog](http://banshee-44.tumblr.com) or [kaytewrites, my writing blog!](http://kaytewrites.tumblr.com)


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